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Will U.S. Sovereignty Be LOST At Sea? Obama Supports U.N. Treaty That Redistributes Drilling Revenues

A proposed Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which is supported by President Obama but has not yet been ratified by Congress, will subordinate U.S. naval and drilling operations beyond 200 miles of our coast to a newly established U.N. bureaucracy. If approved, it will grant a Kingston, Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) the power to regulate deep-sea oil exploration, seabed mining, and fishing rights.

As part of the deal, as much as 7% of U.S. government revenue that is collected from oil and gas companies operating off our coast will be forked over to ISA for redistribution to poorer, landlocked countries. This apparently is in penance for America’s audacity in perpetuating prosperity yielded by our Industrial Revolution.

Under current law, oil companies are required to pay royalties to the U.S. Treasury (typically at a rate of 12 ½% to 18%) for oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and off the northern coast of Alaska. Treasury keeps a portion, and the rest goes to Gulf states and to the National Historic Preservation Fund. But if LOST is ratified, about half of those Treasury revenues, amounting to billions, if not trillions of dollars, would go to the ISA. We will be required to pay 1% of those “international royalties” beginning in the sixth year of production at each site, with rates increasing at 1% annual increments until the 12th year when they would remain at 7% thereafter.

Like the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol debacle that preceded it, this most recent LOST cause embodies the progressive ideal of subordinating the sovereignty of nation states to authoritarian dictates of a world body. The U.S. would have one vote out of 160 regarding where the money would go, and be obligated to hand over offshore drilling technology to any nation that wants it… for free.

And who are those lucky international recipients? They will most likely include such undemocratic, despotic and brutal governments as Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe…all current voting members of LOST.

The treaty was originally drafted in 1968 at the behest of Soviet bloc and Third World dictators interested in implementing a scheme to weaken U.S. power and transferring wealth from industrialized countries to the developing world. It had been co-authored by Elisabeth Mann Borgese, a socialist and admirer of Karl Marx who ran the World Federation of Canada. In a 1999 speech she declared: “The world ocean has been and is so to speak, our great laboratory for making a new world order.” Recognizing this as a global grab, President Reagan thought it was such a lousy idea that he not only refused to sign, but actually fired the State Department staff that helped negotiate it.

The treaty has been pitched as an effort to protect the world’s oceans from environmental damage and to avoid potential conflicts between nations. Accordingly, ISA would settle international maritime and jurisdictional disputes, possibly even to the extent of overriding our U.S. Navy’s freedom of navigation and governing where ships can and cannot go. ISA’s prerogative to do so would be entirely consistent with a “global test” definition advocated by key LOST proponent Senator John Kerry in 2004.

The treaty contains a clause empowering the ISA to take whatever steps it deems necessary to stop “marine pollution.” According to William C. G. Burns of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, its expansive definition of pollution could be read to include “…the potential impact of rising sea surface temperature, rising sea levels, and changes in ocean pH as a consequence of rising levels of carbon dioxide in sea water.” Burns warns that this could “give rise to actions under the Convention’s marine pollution provisions to reduce carbon emissions worldwide.” He warns that this can easily be expanded to include anti-global warming measures, and since it would be “self-executing”, U.S. courts can be used to enforce it.

Powerful environmental organizations love LOST because it will afford a legal system for dispute resolution which culminates in a 21-member international tribunal (ITLOS) based in Hamburg which can be enforced against American companies without possibilities of U.S. court appeal. Numerous lawsuits charging global warming dangers linked to greenhouse emissions from ships will most likely supersede binding rules of the discredited Kyoto Protocol which the U.S. wisely never ratified.

The U.S. Navy maintains that we need LOST to guarantee free transit in dangerous waters, such as in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to block, and in the South China Sea which is dominated by China. Yet freedom of navigation has been recognized under international law for centuries. It was policed by the British Navy over 400 years, and by ours since 1775. Since the U.N. has no navy, it will still be up to us to continue this role.

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The amount of ignorance is this column about UNCLOS is truly phenomenal. It would take a lot of effort to achieve this and one wonders how author can manage it. He seems to know how to read but manages to overcome that skill and indulge his imagination.

ISA has no power to do anything regarding navigation because ISA only controls what happens with regards to non-living resources (so basically mineral extraction) in the deep seabed, leaving the waters above unaffected by its power. The revenue sharing schemes are only applied to those resources that are extracted by the coastal state beyond its normal 200nm continental shelf extension, because normally that area would constitute part of the deep seabed. Fisheries ARE regulated from many angles and UNCLOS does not bring anything particularly new or stricter than the actual controls that the US has in place already, together with the RFO’s. Those would be “one or tow things” specifically to disagree with.

Thanks, Lester. I’ve read just a tiny bit more about this since I wrote my question to you and your response goes along with much that I have read.

I have come to an even firmer conclusion that even if there are benefits hidden within this treaty, the downsides outweigh the benefits … for me.

For instance you said (and I have read similar from other sources), “Fisheries ARE regulated from many angles and UNCLOS does not bring anything particularly new or stricter than the actual controls that the US has in place already, together with the RFO’s.” As I see it, if that is true then neither the U.S. nor the world needs us to sign the treaty in order for us to adhere to something we are already doing.

Or in regard to the tax/fee/royalties/tribute/ required from the use of the sea’s natural resources (future possible mineral extraction, including oil) only being “applied to those resources that are extracted by the coastal state beyond its normal 200nm continental shelf extension”. To me this sounds like a simple “redistribution scheme” (as if we don’t freely give more than any other country already… even to our enemies without being ‘treatied’ into it). So in my opinion (so far) it’s not really needed.

Lesther you said, “ISA has no power to do anything regarding navigation because ISA only controls what happens with regards to non-living resources (so basically mineral extraction) in the deep seabed, leaving the waters above unaffected by its power.”

But, here is what the UN’s Division of Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea (DOALOS) had to say at the official celebration of the “25th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea” on October 17, 2007 (taken from the document found here — http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_25years/unclos25years_info.pdf ): “It established for the first time one set of rules for the oceans, bringing order to a system fraught with potential conflict. Its scope is vast: it covers *all* ocean space, with *all* its uses, *including navigation and overflight*; all uses of all its resources, living and non-living, on the high seas, on the ocean floor and beneath, on the continental shelf and in the territorial seas; the protection of the marine environment; and basic law and order.”

Unless that guy/girl was fired and publically denounced since then … unless the 2007 version is different from the 2011 or 2012 version (which might be the case but so far I haven’t found anything that contradicts it).

Another direct attempt by the Obama Administration to weaken America and allow some of our solvency to be chopped away. Allowing ourselves to be dictated to by the UN in any way shape or form is just wrong; why we we ever allow ourselves to be dictated to to a bunch of people who hate us to begin with. In all my years I never would have though we’d ever elect a President, again, as weak as some one like Carter, bioy was I wrong on that one.

Mr. Bell. Among the half truth and outright falsehoods in this screed is your characterization of me “warning” about the potential application of UNCLOS provisions to climate change. In the article that you quote I actually ADVOCATED this, which means that you distorted my intent, no doubt intentionally. I would ask you to do the right thing and make emendations to your piece to this effect.

Mr. Burns you said, “Mr. Bell. Among the half truth and outright falsehoods in this screed is your characterization of me “warning” about the potential application of UNCLOS provisions to climate change. In the article that you quote I actually ADVOCATED this, which means that you distorted my intent, no doubt intentionally.”

Mr. Burns, To me (as well as to Mr. Bell apparently) your statements *are* a warning … the fact that you actually revel in what we take as warnings … okay. It does not change the validity of the what Mr. Bell has written in that particular paragraph one whit.

Here is something you said that I *totally* take as a warning, whether or not you meant it that way:

“Although the Kyoto Protocol has been viewed as a milestone in international climate change policy, its potential to stem the tide of environmental degradation may prove illusory on two fronts: first, the U.S. has declined to become a Party to the Protocol; and second, *even full implementation by all* industrialized States would *only modestly* affect atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions.

**In this context, climate change litigation in national and international fora is emerging as an alternative means by which to hold States and private actors accountable for climate change damages**.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is a promising instrument through which such action might be taken…” (Asterisks added by me.)

In other words, the LOST is another attempt at an end run around the Congress and Citizens of the United States, once again. An attempt to implement Kyoto without our actually being a signatory of Kyoto. That alone is very good reason to suspect the rest of the deal (that is if having the endorsement of the UN wasn’t already enough).